Monday, 16 March 2015

Without
spectators there is no spectacle. After the last of the televised war
programming, viewers report a vacancy in their lives. People ache to do
the right thing, a survey shows, but they are confused and usually end
up doing exactly the opposite. No one knows why, but inflicting pain on
officially designated victims seems optimally fulfilling. We verbalize
for the Question Man our need to "feel good about ourselves," a deep
hunger like that of irresolute souls who roam the higher realms of the
underworld in a continual restless anxiety, and once more smoke rises
from the stages of rock concerts as at Roman sacrifices.

Heralding
the pop goddess' coming with dutiful pomp and circumstance like
regimental janissaries of some sulking imperial potentate, a cordon of
jogging Gallic policemen in full dress regalia precedes her white
limousine as it cruises to a showy halt before the palace.

Police at Porte de Vincennes: photo by Dan Kitwood via The Guardian, 9 January 2015

Out
she steps, magnetic in a rose-coloured kimono. From the throng of
spellbound onlookers, who have never dared imagine her as anything but a
platinum blonde, her heavy brown curls elicit stunned gasps. At a safe
distance behind police restraining barriers they feast on her as
deliriously as famished refugees ravaging a relief truck.

Paris, France. President Francois Hollande wears 3D glasses to watch the Philae probe as it lands on comet 67P: photo by Jacques Brinon/Reuters via The Guardian, 13 November 2014

Moving
slowly up the palace staircase she pauses every few steps to bask in
her fame and pose for photos. Like glowing fruit in the emir's hanging
gardens, or detonated grenades, flash explosions fill the soft night air.

She
ascends the stairs, a charged filament, rose-coloured sexual
electricity conducted through space as if by remote control in a world
that is an enormous studio, while the ambient pseudo-orchestral din of
pulsing polyrhythmic synthesizer music reaches a shuddering climax -- a
thousand jackboots stomping at once against the back-beat, demented
shrieking of a toy doll overdubbed. A hallucinated yet oddly predictable
lyric pounds into a billion brains, while video of her sucking on a
coke bottle pours down two billion eyeballs. Model yachts glide across
the glassy surface of the satellite reflecting pools around the outdoor
fountain at Eden Roc. It is a society of a trillion fantasies daring to
be the same.

At
the top of the steps she lets the kimono slip from her shoulders, there
are squeals and screams of delight as the blue and red spotlights nibble
at her underwear, which is exotic virginal white. The breast cups of her
bra, modeled to simulate warheads of guided missiles, project out with
an attitude of uplift and thrust into a target-rich consumer
environment, computer-driven to the mark, and the screaming never stops.

Armani has defended himself after #Madonna blamed his cape for her fall at the Grammys: image via Marie Claire @marieclaireau, 4 March 2015

Amazing to think that Madonna, an ‘older’ person wearing revealing
clothes – corsetry, boobs proudly on show, legs encased in fishnets –
can still get folk in a lather: photo by Kevin Mazur/WireImage via The Guardian, 12 February 2015

Do you love the stunning @Fantasie1 Belle range as much as Madonna? ;) #madonna #lingerie: image via Belle Lingerie @bellelingerie, 5 March 2015

Cheek-a-boo! Madonna at the Grammys: photo by Jason Merritt via the Guardian, 9 February 2015

Column: #Madonna still the same; we're the ones who changed. By #copygirlkate: image via St. Cloud Times @sctimes, 7 March 2015

Just a few more hours until U.S. Release
tick tock #Madonna #RebelHeart @iTunesMusic: image The Queen @Amen_Madonna, 9 March 2015

Tokyo, Japan. Office workers are seen through the windows of a building at dusk: photo by Issei Kato/Reuters via The Guardian, 3 March 2015

Hong Kong. Rurik Jutting, right, sits in an police van after his court appearance. He has been
charged with killing two women, including one whose body was found
inside a suitcase on the balcony of his apartment: photo by Vincent Yu / AP via The Guardian, 3 November 2014

Xuancheng, China An exhibition of about 1,600 panda sculptures is held to attract customers for a shopping mall: photo by ChinaFotoPress via The Guardian, 3 November 2014

This fun use of a tilt-shift lens gives a miniature feel to the people
passing a giant sculpture of a dog at the Parkview Green shopping centre
in Beijing, China: photo by Diego Azubel / EPA via The Guardian, 12 November 2013

An
ivory bust of former Chinese leader Mao Zedung for sale in Guangzhou,
China. Chinese demand for ivory is stripping Tanzania of its elephant
population: photo by STR/EPA via The Guardian, 7 November 2014

In an echo of events last
week after the shooting, officers outside the church turn their backs on
a video monitor as de Blasio speaks: photo by Shannon Stapleton/Reuters via The Guardian, 27 December 2014

#Uniformity and #Obedience... some e of the State's favorite characteristics of its servants #NoRoomForIndividualismIn: image via GospelPanacea @GospelPanacea, 13 September 2014

Tokyo, Japan.Seoul, South Korea.All
lined up perfectly: new South Korean military officers attend the joint
commission ceremony of 6,478 new military officers of the army, navy,
air force and marines at the military headquarters in Gyeryong: photo by Lee Jin-man/AP via The Guardian, 12 March 2015

Workers at a Foxconn factory in China.The typical worker at Apple’s main manufacturer is a young man of 27,
a “migrant worker” who grew up in a village. One among 170,000
employees, he (two-thirds of staff are male) earns about £180 a month at
China’s biggest technology manufacturer, most likely in one of its
airport-sized facilities in Shenzhen, about an hour’s drive from Hong
Kong. Those wages are more than many blue-collar jobs in China -- and many go to Foxconn for a short-term summer job before returning
to school or university in the autumn. The biggest threat to their
livelihood might not be Apple; instead, it’s Foxconn’s plan to install robots to eliminate errors. Apple’s rise has come through lucrative contracts with Foxconn
and many other suppliers in and around Shenzhen handpicked to meet
exacting deadlines and quality controls. Apple boss Tim Cook says it is
impossible to find companies of such scale in the US. Workers
typically put in 56 to 61 hours a week (despite the local
legal maximum of 60), some doing seven-day stints without a break during
the summer as orders are ramped up for new devices to be launched in
the autumn. A Fair Labor Organisation investigation in 2012 found that
required 15-minute breaks every two hours were sometimes ignored.
The strain drove some to suicide in the past; Apple has repeatedly
pledged to improve its labour practices, with counselling and labour
monitoring.: text by Charles Arthur: Planet Apple; photo by Darley Shen/Reuters via The Guardian, 1 February 2015

Beijing, China.
Attendants prepare tea for delegates ahead of the second plenary
meeting of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference at the
Great Hall of the People: photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters via the Guardian, 11 March 2015

Echo Chamber... signal receding... past not exist... all must be same now...

Remember this out-of-this-world #selfie? CIVA will also take a pic of @ESA_Rosetta as we separate #cometlanding #67p: image via Philae Lander @Philae2014, 13 November 2014

When the Medina Luminous Division marched intoDivine Anger in the Energy Refuge Theatre --Bottle green starlight chaos, Blood rivers in the sand, dust flecked with bits of Sumerian gods --The Commanders felt good about themselves,They said Say hello to AllahAnd the Medina Luminous Division said hello to God.

Next the In God We Trust Division was drawn out of K CityIt was Bravo-20 on the Basra RoadRockeye and Hellfire lived up to the instruction manualsAs the fireballs digested the convoys of the helplessThe Commanders paused to gas upTheir F/A-18s, their humvees, their Apaches Then moved out to incinerate the Hammurabi.TC: The Commanders, from Sleepwalker's Fate, 1991

Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games: photo by Murray Close/Lionsgate via New York Times, 22 March 2012

My Lord, Duncan, you've just singlehandedly bailed this post out of the household dudgeon, or dungeon, you know what I mean.

Vincent, I do like, in fact I always do like Pere Ubu, since way back when -- in fact we may have once liked Pere Ubu together, back in lava lamp days.

(Reminds me in turn of Negativeland, and the unexpected death last December of the original retiring culture-mashing genius inspirer of that project -- "routine" heart procedure at the formidable Stanford Hospital, bad post-op bacterial thing, yet another object lesson in how you're better off staying out of hospitals, no matter what.)